Sexagesima Sunday

Rev. Jon C. Olson

23 February 2014

Today, Sexagesisma, some 60 days before Easter, the Church continues her preparation for a real conversion of heart and mind during the forty days of Lent.  Today is about our falling away from God while God is constantly calling us back by His Word.  Today is about not giving up hope in the midst of struggle, suffering and sin.  Today’s readings remind us that such a return is possible only “By the Word alone.” 

       You see, the Word of God is not lifeless.  It isn’t just a bunch data or a collection of information.  The Word of God is not an assembly of centuries of man’s head knowledge.  The Word of God is also not something that depends on anybody’s interpretation.  Listen to how God’s Word is described in today’s readings.
       In Isaiah we heard that just like the rain and the snow descend from heaven and doesn’t return without doing what they were sent to do, causing the earth to bud and supplying seed for the sower and bread for the eater – so too it is that the Word that goes forth from the mouth of God continues to do what it says, even to this very day.  Listen to His promise: the Word, “…shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.”
        What a promise that is!  His Word has the power to do what God sends it to do.  And what He sends it to do is to bring us to repentance and awaken and keep us in saving faith.  The Word of God has the power in and of itself to do that.
        Or think of how the Word of God is described in Hebrews 4.
        For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12) 
        The Word of God is compared to a weapon used to kill in war.  Which is to say that the Word of God that enters in through the ear and lodges itself in the heart has the power in and of itself to kill.  It kills by slicing and peeling away layers of sin in ways that you and I do not expect.  There’s no escaping the fact that when we listen and hear God’s Word there are some Words so directly and sharply aimed at their target that the Word of God causes us to drop to our knees in the realization of our need for God’s mercy.  Mercy that God is eager to pour out upon us.  Mercy that comes solely through that same Word of God that pierced our hearts.  God’s greatest love is to apply the healing ointment of grace upon the sin—filled and infected wounds revealed by His Word.  He does so by sticking His Law & Gospel into our ears and pouring into our wounds the blood of Christ.
        Understanding that the Word of God does what it says is foundational to understanding today’s Gospel lesson.  Jesus, of course, is the sower.  He plants His Word into all kinds of soil, throws it out for whoever will bother to give a listen.  But here’s the confusing thing: not all who hear the Word of God end up being saved.  This is difficult for us to stomach.  Because if the Word of God accomplishes what God sent it to do, why do so many of our family, friends and neighbors reject and turn away from it?
        Make no mistake about it: the Word of God has real power.  Every time it is preached, read, and heard, God the Holy Spirit is present in the Word seeking to give the gift of repentant faith.  But the gift is always a gift.  And as a gift we can reject it.  In today’s Gospel Jesus warns against that rejection.  It can happen in a variety of ways.
        First, by inattentive listening.  Just sitting in church and letting the Word float by your ears, or bounce around in the ear canal or lightly tap your ear drums, but never really listening to it and letting it sink into your mind and heart.  Or, the Word can go in one ear and out the other.  What’s really going on there, Jesus says, is that Satan snatches the Word away before it can bear fruit, before it can do what it has the power to do.  If Satan can keep you day-dreaming during church, he’s already won. 
        Then there’s the listening that hears and rejoices, believes and thanks God, only in life’s good moments.  And when the bad-times come along – and they always do – the person lets go of the Word and their faith withers up and can die.  One of the purposes of hearing the Word in good times is to store up in your heart and mind those passages that will get your through the terrible times with your faith intact.  The Word has the power to do it, provided we don’t let it go.  So often this happens when tragedy comes – people stop going to church, stop listening to the Word, and then they’re surprised when their faith grows weaker and weaker and finally dies.  Remember: faith is NEVER something you can keep alive inside yourself.  It only comes from continuously hearing and holding the active Word of God.
        Next, our Lord reminds us that even folks who listen to the Word attentively, can still lose it, and so also their faith, when their faith in Jesus is crowded out of their lives.  Crowded out by what?  Jesus speaks of the cares, riches and pleasures of this life.  Cares and riches often go together: “Gotta finish that home renovation project. No time for the Word this week.”  Pleasures?  “But pastor, you know that we spend the weekend at the lake; our kids had ballgames; we have so little family together that we like to keep as many Sundays as we can during the summer just for us.”  "No time to read my Bible or Catechism today; too busy shooting bad guys on the computer, or watching great faith building TV shows like “House of Cards” or “The Walking Dead”, or whatever."  What do all these excuses have in common?  One thing: the rejection of the Word of God, squeezing it into an ever smaller place in our lives until at last we don’t hear it at all.  I am not saying you and I cannot do those things!  What I am saying is that there comes a time to sit aside the pleasures and games of this life for serious business of sin and death.  No one is too busy to go to church a little more than twice a week for a month during Lent.  Treating the third commandment to keep the Sabbath Day as though it is optional, instead of God’s will for us is to set yourself on a dangerous path.
        (At this point I went off script and discussed the 40th Anniversary of "Seminex" and the necessity of the laity learning the doctrine of the church. And how this was especially so since it was the pastors & professors at the seminary who led the seminary in St. Louis off the path of Holy Scripture. "The laity knowing the Bible was a huge factor in surviving the Battle of the Bible". Today's laity knowing the teachings of the Bible is especially important as the culture is pressing in on the walls of the church to change her teachings.)

If this is how Christian congregations treat the Third Commandment, it really isn’t any surprise then that other commandments such as the Fifth which says that we are not to murder innocent babies in the womb, or the Sixth commandment dealing with sexual ethics and the institution of marriage also become optional.  Do not think that congregations (and I include pastors) can continue neglecting God’s word or taking it for granted because you belong to a so-called “conservative” church body.  It is every Christian’s duty, not just the pastors, to know what the Word of God says concerning these and many other Biblical teachings. 

        And then our Lord reminds us, (thankfully!)  that it is possible to hear His Word in such a way that it bears abundant fruit.  He describes those hearts that hear and hold fast the Word as honest and good.  How did those hearts get to be honest and good?  Precisely by hearing and holding the Word.  If, as the Apostle Paul says, faith is what cleanses the heart, and faith comes by hearing the Word of God, then our hearts can do nothing but be “honest and good”.
        Lent is right around the corner.  We will be walking with Jesus up to Jerusalem.  We will stand at the foot of the Cross and behold Him as He takes the sin of the world on His back and bears it before His Father– including the sin of our not hearing the Word, thinking other things in life are more important that what the God who created us has to say to us.  He will bear that sin and all sins in His body.  And He does it NOT so that we can rejoice that He forgives us and then go on our merry way continuing to ignore God’s Word.  He does it so that we might be forgiven and so spiritually grow as grateful and faithful hearers of the Word.  He does it so that His people can share God’s Word with others who have never heard what it says concerning all life being precious.  That’s what the Lenten Midweek Services are available for: to give even more opportunity for the Word of God to have its way with you and to teach you into all Truth. 
        From the garden, to the cross, to the empty tomb, and from the glorified body of your Lord at the right of the Father, the Word that He speaks is His eternal word of His eternal love for you.  The God who created and formed you wants you with all His heart to share in His unending life, to enjoy Him and His presence forever. The Word even gives the gift of God’s presence now– just as it does when the almighty Word of Jesus causes the bread and wine to be what He declares them: His body and blood, for the forgiveness of sins. 
        God speaks only by His Word.  Only by His Word comes renewal.  Will you listen when He speaks?  Will you let His Word be planted inside of you and grow inside of you that you may abide in Your Savior until death and through death to the life that never ends?  That’s what God wants and His Word has the power to do it.  “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”